11/15/2013

HONG KONG (AP) — They gather in California churches, in Hong Kong shopping malls, at prayer vigils in Bahrain and on hastily launched Facebook pages. Philippine overseas workers, cut off from home after a super-typhoon killed thousands, are coming together to pray, swap information and launch aid drives.

Above all, many of the more than 10.5 million Filipinos abroad — some 10 percent of the country's population — are desperately dialing phone numbers that don't answer in the typhoon zone, where aid is still only slowly trickling in and communications have been largely blown away.

"I call again, and I keep trying and trying and trying but no one answered," said Princess Howard, a worker at a money transfer business in Hong Kong, of her attempts to reach her 62-year-old grandfather and nine other relatives in the Leyte region that was flattened when Typhoon Haiyan hit one week ago.

Sending $21.4 billion back home last year alone, Filipino overseas workers are a major part of their country's economy, with their remittances equaling nearly 10 percent of gross domestic product. Spread out over more than 200 countries, they work as nurses in Europe, sugar cane laborers in Malaysia, housemaids in Hong Kong and construction workers in the oil-rich Middle East.

Hong Kong alone has some 133,000 Filipinos, mostly domestic workers who tend to gather in local parks on Sundays, a day off. There are so many Filipinos in Hong Kong, that an entire shopping mall catering to them has developed — to buy goods from home and, crucially, wire money back to families. Howard, 18, works in a remittance agency at the mall and says that days after the storm, her family is still ringing missing relatives' mobile phones 10 to 20 times a day with no luck. "Sometimes I lose hope. And sometimes I just carry on doing it."

For Filipinos abroad, the price of earning a living for family back home has always been separation, and for many, that has never been felt so keenly over the past week as they watched helplessly from afar as the typhoon ripped apart entire communities.

"If only I had magic, in one click I would be there," said 30-year-old Jeff Ilagan, an assistant pastor at the Filipino Disciples Christian Church in Los Angeles, California, who is from Leyte and whose wife and three young children are still in their village. As the storm hit, he endured a sleepless night worrying after receiving a text message from his wife saying, "Pray for us."

Ilagan's family survived and he is desperate to see them but he can't leave the U.S. for a full year or he will invalidate his religious worker visa. Instead, the young pastor is throwing himself into fundraising efforts at his adopted U.S. church, organizing special offerings and weekly rummage sales for typhoon relief.

"What I can do here to help them is to pray for them and participate in any efforts to help," he said

In Kuwait City, 27-year old pharmacist Dindin Ponferrada has tried dozens of time to reach her family in Barugo, about 20 kilometers west of the worst-hit city of Tacloban, but all lines are cut.

"Every time I check Facebook, I see people posting pictures of the devastation and asking for help and aid," she said.

View gallery."

FILE - In this Monday, Nov. 11, 2013 photo, Terrence Valen, president of the National Alliance for F …

In a display of unity in Bahrain, local Shiite Muslims joined the Filipino workers' community in a candlelight vigil Tuesday. A 48-year-old domestic worker, Maria Lisa Bartolome, one of about 50,000 Filipino workers in the Gulf state, said she joined another vigil at the main Catholic church in the capital Manama. Bartolome's family lives in Manila and rode out the typhoon, but she has not heard from relatives in Cebu.

"We are praying not to have another typhoon," she said.

The Philippines has long been known as a nation that exports its people, starting with the political strife that began in the 1970s under dictator Ferdinand Marcos and continuing through the decades as the country's economy faltered even as other Southeast Asian nations prospered.

The country in recent years has made an impressive economic comeback, but overseas workers still remain one of the pillars of the economy.

Over the decades, the trend has created a far-flung and yet close-knit diaspora.

View gallery."

Philippines military personnel unload relief aid from a C-130 transport plane at the airport in Tacl …

"All Filipinos working abroad share the desire to sacrifice to do something to help their families back home. So Filipinos also tend to help each other wherever they find each other, because they all share this spirit," says Ted Laguatan, a Philippines-born lawyer in San Francisco who specializes in immigration cases and has written essays on the Filipino diaspora.

That unity and its resulting network of churches and community groups has swung into action across the world in the past week.

Philippine-born Letty Desacola, who has called Australia home since 1979, was devastated when she heard that nine members of her extended family were dead.

The 61-year-old retired hospital employee who lives in the east coast city of Brisbane decided to focus on raising donations for survivors through a Facebook page she created.

"I thought I'm not going to sit feeling sorry and grieving because it's not going to help. So what I did, I called a friend of mine in the shipping business and asked for help," she said.

She was given a shipping container free of charge to fill with donated emergency supplies. A Brisbane storage company has donated a collection place. One local business has so far donated a ton of linen. Tents, clothes and tinned food are rolling in.

"It's very, very overwhelming, the response," Desacola said

Overwhelming but not surprising, said Laguatan.

"Filipinos have an incredible resilience, an incredible ability to survive anywhere in the world," he said. "We are used to hardship, from oppression to natural disasters, and we understand suffering."

11/12/2013

It has been just over a week now since the iPad Air went on sale and we first got it in our hot little hands. A hot topic of discussion for any new device is battery life; an important subject area but also something we can't talk with any education about right away. So, now we've all had chance to use it, drain it, recharge it and use it again, just how is your iPad Air battery life?

It's something we spoke about on the most recent iMore Show, where Rene, Ally and myself reviewed Apple's latest tablet. With a mix of WiFi only and cellular iPad Airs on staff, we're all generally seeing excellent battery life. In the 10 days since picking up my own iPad Air, I've charged it three times, two of which it had only reduced down to 20%. I'm using it a lot more than I was using my iPad 4, but compared to that I'm extremely pleased with how long the battery lasts.

Of course, it sadly isn't the same for everyone. Different use cases, even faulty units can come in to play, and while there's a bunch of different tips and tricks we can follow to try and improve things, it remains a sad truth that for some folks battery life just isn't good.

So, drop a vote in the poll up top, and head on into the comments below and share your iPad Air battery life experiences!

11/09/2013

The new API 19 SDK tools include an easy way to record what happens on your Android's screen

Ever wanted to record exactly what's happening on your Android screen? Anyone who writes about Android for a living sure does, and now that KitKat is in the wild we see it will be easy to do with the latest version of Android.

You'll need the SDK installed, which is a little barrier for some, but there are plenty of folks in the forums to help make that happen for any computer, be it Windows, Mac or Linux.

That's also where you'll find Phil's mini How-To on screen recording, complete with examples. If you have you Nexus 5 already, or have put some flavor of KitKat on your current phone, jump in and give it a look. It's easier than you think!

11/03/2013

Huddled together just before the first of this year's awards-season roundtables got underway at the historic Mack Sennett Studios in Silver Lake, the six invited actors were eager to discuss one thing: Christopher Nolan. "Is he a big guy?" one of the participants asked Matthew McConaughey, who was taking a break from shooting the director's Interstellar on the Sony lot. Queried another, "Does he talk a lot?" McConaughey, 43, demurred as he joked with his Dallas Buyers Club co-star Jared Leto, 41, who had flown in the night before from Michigan, where he performed with his band 30 Seconds to Mars. The duo joined Josh Brolin, 45, Jake Gyllenhaal, 32, Michael B. Jordan, 26, and Forest Whitaker, 52, in a candid discussion about everything from flubbed auditions to Brazilian waxing.

FOREST WHITAKER: There's a good fear, and there's a negative fear. There's a thing you confront when you're going into something new and you come to this sort of abyss, and then you push yourself. It makes you try different things.

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY: You mentioned two types of fear, and the one that's good is when you're scared. You don't know what's on the other side, but you're like: "I'm gonna dive in. I know there's something there; I don't know how to define it yet. I don't know the equation, but I'm gonna come up and I'll understand it." It takes you to the cliff, and you should be scared because the cliff drops, and you don't have a net.

BROLIN: I've never had that feeling in any movie where I actually feel like I'm nailing it.

WHITAKER: You don't feel the magic of it once in a while?

BROLIN: Never ever.

LETO: I get a terminal dissatisfaction on films. If I was bad in one scene, it's impossible to let go. And it can make or break my day. If I drank, I would probably drink a lot.

LETO: Oh yeah. I've talked myself out of auditions a hundred times. I auditioned for [Robert] De Niro seven times, years and years ago. I remember auditioning for Terrence Malick, and the casting director upended a couch, and we were supposed to hide behind it and shoot imaginary guns! [Laughter.] In that audition, I literally stood up, took a few imaginary bullets and shoved [the casting director]. I said: "I can't do this. This is like a bad high school play," and I walked out. And then Terrence called me -- you guys I'm sure have met him; he's the most gentle and amazing guy in the world -- and he's like: "Uh, Jared? I'd love you to be in my film."

Have you ever thought of quitting?

LETO: I did for six years, almost.

BROLIN: Six years you didn't work? Wow.

GYLLENHAAL: [Smiles.] It's only appropriate as an indulgent actor to think about quitting 'cause it's such an intense job.

WHITAKER: It takes a lot from you.

LETO: I was focusing on other passions, and time kind of flew by. But it can be heartbreaking. You make these little movies -- most of the time they don't work.

BROLIN: That goes back to what we were saying about feeling like you're [not] really nailing something. I remember [1996's] Flirting With Disaster -- I did the movie and never felt like we were nailing it at all. And then I saw the movie …

10/31/2013

FILE - In this Jan. 17, 1996 file photo, Lou Reed takes the podium as the Velvet Underground, the group he once headed, is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame during a ceremony in New York s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Band mate John Cale is at left, and at right is Martha Morrison, accepting for late band member Sterling Morrison. Punk-poet, rock legend Lou Reed is dead of a liver-related ailment, his literary agen said Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013. He was 71. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

FILE - In this Jan. 17, 1996 file photo, Lou Reed takes the podium as the Velvet Underground, the group he once headed, is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame during a ceremony in New York s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Band mate John Cale is at left, and at right is Martha Morrison, accepting for late band member Sterling Morrison. Punk-poet, rock legend Lou Reed is dead of a liver-related ailment, his literary agen said Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013. He was 71. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

FILE - In a Wednesday, Jan. 17, 1996 file photo, members of the band the Velvet Underground, from left, Maureen Tucker; Martha Morrison, attending for her late husband, Sterling Morrison; John Cale and Lou Reed pose backstage after their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in New York s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Punk-poet, rock legend Lou Reed is dead of a liver-related ailment, his literary agen said Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013. He was 71. (AP Photo/Joe Tabacca, File)

FILE - In a June 24, 2003 file photo, music icon Lou Reed has his hands imprinted as supporters cheer in the background as he is inducted into Hollywood's Rockwalk, in the Hollywood section of Los Angeles. Punk-poet, rock legend Lou Reed is dead of a liver-related ailment, his literary agen said Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013. He was 71.(AP Photo/Ric Francis, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — Lou Reed, the punk poet of rock n' roll who profoundly influenced generations of musicians as leader of the Velvet Underground and remained a vital solo performer for decades after, died Sunday age 71.

Reed died in Southampton, N.Y. of an ailment related to his recent liver transplant, according to his literary agent, Andrew Wylie, who added that Reed had been in frail health for months. Reed shared a home in Southampton with his wife and fellow musician, Laurie Anderson, whom he married in 2008.

Reed never approached the commercial success of such superstars as the Beatles and Bob Dylan, but no songwriter to emerge after Dylan so radically expanded the territory of rock lyrics. And no band did more than the Velvet Underground to open rock music to the avant-garde — to experimental theater, art, literature and film, to William Burroughs and Kurt Weill, to John Cage and Andy Warhol, Reed's early patron.

Indie rock essentially begins in the 1960s with Reed and the Velvets; the punk, New Wave and alternative rock movements of the 1970s, '80s and '90s were all indebted to Reed, whose songs were covered by R.E.M., Nirvana, Patti Smith and countless others.

"The first Velvet Underground record sold 30,000 copies in the first five years," Brian Eno, who produced albums by Roxy Music and Talking Heads among others, once said. "I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band!"

Reed's trademarks were a monotone of surprising emotional range and power; slashing, grinding guitar; and lyrics that were complex, yet conversational, designed to make you feel as if Reed were seated next to you. Known for his cold stare and gaunt features, he was a cynic and a seeker who seemed to embody downtown Manhattan culture of the 1960s and '70s and was as essential a New York artist as Martin Scorsese or Woody Allen. Reed's New York was a jaded city of drag queens, drug addicts and violence, but it was also as wondrous as any Allen comedy, with so many of Reed's songs explorations of right and wrong and quests for transcendence.

He had one top 20 hit, "Walk On the Wild Side," and many other songs that became standards among his admirers, from "Heroin" and "Sweet Jane" to "Pale Blue Eyes" and "All Tomorrow's Parties." Raised on doo-wop and Carl Perkins, Delmore Schwartz and the Beats, Reed helped shape the punk ethos of raw power, the alternative rock ethos of irony and droning music and the art-rock embrace of experimentation, whether the dual readings of Beat-influenced verse for "Murder Mystery," or, like a passage out of Burroughs' "Naked Lunch," the orgy of guns, drugs and oral sex on the Velvets' 15-minute "Sister Ray."

An outlaw in his early years, Reed would eventually perform at the White House, have his writing published in The New Yorker, be featured by PBS in an "American Masters" documentary and win a Grammy in 1999 for Best Long Form Music Video. The Velvet Underground was inducted into the Rock and Roll of Fame in 1996 and their landmark debut album, "The Velvet Underground & Nico," was added to the Library of Congress' registry in 2006.

Reed called one song "Growing Up in Public" and his career was an ongoing exhibit of how any subject could be set to rock music — the death of a parent ("Standing On Ceremony), AIDS ("The Halloween Parade"), some favorite movies and plays ("Doin' the Things That We Want To"), racism ("I Want to be Black"), the electroshock therapy he received as a teen ("Kill Your Sons").

Reviewing Reed's 1989 topical album "New York," Village Voice critic Robert Christgau wrote that "the pleasure of the lyrics is mostly tone and delivery — plus the impulse they validate, their affirmation that you can write songs about this stuff. Protesting, elegizing, carping, waxing sarcastic, forcing jokes, stating facts, garbling what he just read in the Times, free-associating to doomsday, Lou carries on a New York conversation — all that's missing is a disquisition on real estate."

He was one of rock's archetypal tough guys, but he grew up middle class — an accountant's son raised on Long Island. Reed was born to be a suburban dropout. He hated school, loved rock n' roll, fought with his parents and attacked them in song for forcing him to undergo electroshock therapy as a supposed "cure" for being bisexual. "Families that live out in the suburbs often make each other cry," he later wrote.

His real break began in college. At Syracuse University, he studied under Schwartz, whom Reed would call the first "great man" he ever encountered. He credited Schwartz with making him want to become a writer and to express himself in the most concrete language possible. Reed honored his mentor in the song "My House," recounting how he connected with the spirit of the late, mad poet through a Oiuja board. "Blazing stood the proud and regal name Delmore," he sang.

Reed moved to New York City after college and traveled in the pop and art worlds, working as a house songwriter at the low-budget Pickwick Records and putting in late hours in downtown clubs. One of his Pickwick songs, the dance parody "The Ostrich," was considered commercial enough to record. Fellow studio musicians included a Welsh-born viola player, John Cale, with whom Reed soon performed in such makeshift groups as the Warlocks and the Primitives.

They were joined by a friend of Reed's from Syracuse, guitarist-bassist Sterling Morrison; and by an acquaintance of Morrison's, drummer Maureen Tucker, who tapped out simple, hypnotic rhythms while playing standing up. They renamed themselves the Velvet Underground after a Michael Leigh book about the sexual subculture. By the mid-1960s, they were rehearsing at Warhol's "Factory," a meeting ground of art, music, orgies, drug parties and screen tests for films that ended up being projected onto the band while it performed, part of what Warhol called the "Floating Plastic Inevitable."

"Warhol was the great catalyst," Reed told BOMB magazine in 1998. "It all revolved around him. It all happened very much because of him. He was like a swirl, and these things would come into being: Lo and behold multimedia. There it was. No one really thought about it, it was just fun."

Before the Velvets, references to drugs and sex were often brief and indirect, if only to ensure a chance at radio and television play. In 1967, the year of the Velvets' first album, the Rolling Stones were pressured to sing the title of their latest single as "Let's Spend Some Time Together" instead of "Let's Spend the Night Together" when they were performing on "The Ed Sullivan Show." The Doors fought with Sullivan over the word "higher" from "Light My Fire."

The Velvets said everything other bands were forbidden to say and some things other bands never imagined. Reed wrote some of rock's most explicit lyrics about drugs ("Heroin," ''Waiting for My Man"), sadomasochism ("Venus in Furs") and prostitution ("There She Goes Again"). His love songs were less stories of boy-meets-girl, than ambiguous studies of the heart, like the philosophical games of "Some Kinda Love" or the weary ballad "Pale Blue Eyes," an elegy for an old girlfriend and a confession to a post-breakup fling:

___

It was good what we did yesterday

And I'd do it once again

They fact that you are married

Only proves you're my best friend

But it's truly, truly a sin

___

Away from the Factory, the Velvets and were all too ahead of their time, getting tossed out of clubs or having audience members walk out. The mainstream press, still seeking a handle on the Beatles and the Stones, was thrown entirely by the Velvet Underground. The New York Times at first couldn't find the words, calling the Velvets "Warhol's jazz band" in a January 1966 story and "a combination of rock 'n roll and Egyptian belly-dance music" just days later. The Velvets' appearance in a Warhol film, "More Milk, Yvette," only added to the dismay of Times critic Bosley Crowther.

"Also on the bill is a performance by a group of rock 'n roll singers called the Velvet Underground," Crowther wrote. "They bang away at their electronic equipment, while random movies are thrown on the screen in back of them. When will somebody ennoble Mr. Warhol with an above-ground movie called 'For Crying Out Loud'?"

At Warhol's suggestion, they performed and recorded with the sultry, German-born Nico, a "chanteuse" who sang lead on a handful of songs from their debut album. A storm cloud over 1967's Summer of Love, "The Velvet Underground & Nico" featured a now-iconic Warhol drawing of a (peelable) banana on the cover and proved an uncanny musical extension of Warhol's blank-faced aura. The Velvets juxtaposed childlike melodies with dry, affectless vocals on "Sunday Morning" and "Femme Fatale." On "Heroin," Cale's viola screeched and jumped behind Reed's obliterating junkie's journey, with his sacred vow, "Herrrrrr-o-in, it's my wife, and it's my life," and his cry into the void, "And I guess that I just don't know."

"'Heroin' is the Velvets' masterpiece — seven minutes of excruciating spiritual extremity," wrote critic Ellen Willis. "No other work of art I know about has made the junkie's experience so horrible, so powerful, so appealing; listening to 'Heroin' I feel simultaneously impelled to somehow save this man and to reach for the needle."

Reed made just three more albums with the Velvet Underground before leaving in 1970. Cale was pushed out by Reed in 1968 (they had a long history of animosity) and was replaced by Doug Yule. Their sound turned more accessible, and the final album with Reed, "Loaded," included two upbeat musical anthems, "Rock and Roll" and "Sweet Jane," in which Reed seemed to warn Velvets fans — and himself — that "there's even some evil mothers/Well they're gonna tell you that everything is just dirt."

He lived many lives in the '70s, initially moving back home and working at his father's office, then competing with Keith Richards as the rock star most likely to die. He binged on drugs and alcohol, gained weight, lost even more and was described by critic Lester Bangs as "so transcendently emaciated he had indeed become insectival." Reed simulated shooting heroin during concerts, cursed out journalists and once slugged David Bowie when Bowie suggested he clean up his life.

"Lou Reed is the guy that gave dignity and poetry and rock n' roll to smack, speed, homosexuality, sadomasochism, murder, misogyny, stumblebum passivity, and suicide," wrote Bangs, a dedicated fan and fearless detractor, "and then proceeded to belie all his achievements and return to the mire by turning the whole thing into a monumental bad joke with himself as the woozily insistent Henny Youngman in the center ring, mumbling punch lines that kept losing their punch."

His albums in the '70s were alternately praised as daring experiments or mocked as embarrassing failures, whether the ambitious song suite "Berlin" or the wholly experimental "Metal Machine Music," an hour of electronic feedback. But in the 1980s, he kicked drugs and released a series of acclaimed albums, including "The Blue Mask," ''Legendary Hearts" and "New Sensations."

He played some reunion shows with the Velvet Underground and in 1990 teamed with Cale for "Drella," a spare tribute to Warhol. He continued to receive strong reviews in the 1990s and after for such albums as "Set the Twilight Reeling" and "Ecstasy" and he continued to test new ground, whether a 2002 concept album about Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven," or a 2011 collaboration with Metallica, "Lulu."

Reed fancied dictionary language like "capricious" and "harridan," but he found special magic in the word "bells," sounding from above, "up in the sky," as he sang on the Velvets' "What Goes On." A personal favorite was the title track from a 1979 album, "The Bells." Over a foggy swirl of synthesizers and horns, suggesting a haunted house on skid row, Reed improvised a fairy tale about a stage actor who leaves work late at night and takes in a chiming, urban "Milky Way."

10/28/2013

Mobile photography startup Kicksend has spent the last year inking partnerships with brick-and-mortar retail chains like Walgreens, Target and CVS so it can bring its promise of dead-simple photo sharing and printing to the masses.

Now it looks like Kicksend has another notable feather in its cap — the Mountain View-based company just announced on its blog that it has locked down a deal with Walmart so users can remotely send print jobs to some 3,800 additional stores across the U.S.

It’s certainly a sweet deal for the Kicksend team, especially as they’re finally starting to hit their stride in terms of monthly generated revenue. CEO Pradeep Elankumaran noted that the startup was seeing revenue in the “very low tens of thousands” back in March 2013, but the past six months have seen those figures surge pretty dramatically.

“We’re generating over $150K/month in revenue,” Elankumaran added. “And we’ve been growing 30 percent month-over-month for the past 6 months.” While that’s at least partially a side-effect from Kicksend’s expansion into prominent retail chains, that lift in revenue is also being pegged on strong mobile performance — some 45 percent of Kicksend app users are being converted into paying customers.

So now that Kicksend has locked up a slew of notable photo partners, what’s next on the agenda? Those outreach and partnership programs have been a major focus for the startup since last year, as has a push to go international with its photo deliveries, but Elankumaran and the rest of the team are looking forward to doubling down on the digital side of the business. Currently users are allowed to privately share hundreds of full resolution photos with the people they care about, and it seems as though the team isn’t done tweaking that particular formula just yet.

10/25/2013

One Direction is readying the release of a new album titled Midnight Memories, due out next month, and today they officially release the audio of their new single Story of My Life. Unlike the boyband’s earlier upbeat pop songs, Story is a slower more serious ballad … and I ain’t feelin’ it. Truth be told, and I make this clear all the time, I am NOT a fan of pop ballads. It takes a very special pop ballad to speak to me … and unfortch, this new 1D song doesn’t cut it — for me. That said, I’m certain that the band’s loyal fanbase will eat the song up and rush it right up the singles charts. Click the embed above and see what you think. Are you feelin’ this slower incarnation of One Direction? Are you a fan of Story of My Life?

10/20/2013

Domain registration and hosting company GoDaddy is continuing on its acquisitions roll, with the announcement today that it acquired Media Temple, a premium domain hosting and website services company based out of Los Angeles that targets website development professionals. Financial terms are not being disclosed. [Update: But website builder Virb that Media Temple bought in 2011 is spinning out.]

This is GoDaddy’s sixth acquisition in 15 months, but MT (as it is known) will stand apart from the rest in two ways. The first is that it’s taking GoDaddy deeper into premium services, catering to those who publish content specifically to be consumed on the web; and the second is that it will be the first acquisition that GoDaddy intends to operate as a separate business, staffed by MT’s 225 existing employees, rather than integrating into GoDaddy’s existing operations, which currently serve 12 million customers with over 4,000 employees.

Part of the reason for this, GoDaddy CEO Blake Irving says, is because of Media Temple’s existing size and position in the market. It has 125,000 customers for its premium website management services, and it hosts over 1.5 million websites, with some 88 percent classified as being for “advanced web and IT services”.

“Media Temple is absolutely killing and a standalone brand, and it has an incredible technology,” Irving said in an interview. “We can learn a lot from them, whether it’s in infrastructure or customer acquisition. There is a ton of things that we can learn on the developer and marketing sides. We can continue and invest in and accelerate its growth without integrating. We think it’s a much smarter move for Media Temple to let them remain as their own business.”

Media Temple is a startup that is a little long in the tooth: it’s been around since 1998, growing up in tandem with the wider web. In that time, its founders have raised money ($16.1 million, almost modest by today’s standards), started their own venture fund (now wound down) and built out an impressive list of customers from a mostly bootstrapped enterprise. (Customers include companies like Fifty Three, Drop Stop and LRG to projects for brands like Sony, NBC, The Wall Street Journal, Starbucks, Vogue and Volkswagen.)

As for why MT decided to finally exit after all this time, co-founder Demian Sellfors said that this was always the plan.

“We’ve had our eye on an exit since we started 15 years ago,” he told me. “We regard ourselves as entrepreneurs first and we designed it for exit from the start, even if on the way we accidentally built a phenomenal culture and a business that resounded with the marketplace.” He says that the idea of selling to a much larger company like GoDaddy is to make Media Temple “bigger and better. We are growing nicely but it’s still very humble growth.”

About a year and a half ago, Sellfors helped hire Russ Reeder to run MT, and he will remain in place as its president under GoDaddy, and he echoes the sentiment that this was the best way for MT to continue to grow. “We are excited about this; we’re excited to learn from their scale,” he told me.

For its part, GoDaddy — specifically under Irving (who comes from very senior roles at giants like Microsoft and Yahoo) — has been trying to build out and evolve its business beyond that of a basic web domain registry.

That has included acquisitions and its own product launches to build out different web services for the small businesses that register domains on GoDaddy — these include accounting and payment services, as well as those geared to help them create mobile sites.

Media Temple will help GoDaddy build out more expertise in providing more sophisticated offerings to web-based operations, and will help raise the company’s profile among that class of users for future business. That business, as well, is likely to have higher margins than some of GoDaddy’s existing basic products. MT’s portfolio includes three different classes of web hosting services (priced between $20 and $50 per month), API management, SSL services and CDN (content delivery) services.

Prior to today, GoDaddy’s other recent acquisitions included Ronin for bookkeeping services; Afternic for aftermarket domain registry services (basically a domain resellers’ marketplace); M.dot to help website owners create mobile Internet sites; Locu to help them organize and distribute their business data to other sites/services; and Outright for bookkeeping.

Irving tells me, by the way, that another important area for GoDaddy going forward will be how it expands internationally. Its main site is already available in 30 different languages, but the aim is that by the end of 2015 it will be in some 60 markets with much more localized focus. “Today it’s really about two markets, English and Spanish,” he admitted. “We want to roll out to both Europe and Asia.”

Go Daddy is the Web’s top platform for small businesses and offers everything needed to to grow and manage an online presence, from domain names and website builders to complete eCommerce solutions. The company has earned a place as the world’s #1 ICANN-accredited domain registrar by delivering world-class products at competitive prices and supporting them with industry-best service, delivered 24/7/365.
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(mt) Media Temple, Inc. is a web hosting and virtualization service provider headquartered in Los Angeles, California. Since 1998, the company has provided businesses around the world with reliable, professional-class services to host websites, email, business applications, and other rich Internet content.
The team is comprised of 180+ incredibly smart and friendly employees who help create an award-winning culture. (mt) is an always-on company (24/7/365) with a U.S. based support department serving customers in over 60+ countries. The company offers...

In a typical yoga class, students watch an instructor to learn how to properly hold a position. But for people who are blind or can't see well, it can be frustrating to participate in these types of exercises.

Now, a team of University of Washington computer scientists has created a software program that watches a user's movements and gives spoken feedback on what to change to accurately complete a yoga pose.

"My hope for this technology is for people who are blind or low-vision to be able to try it out, and help give a basic understanding of yoga in a more comfortable setting," said project lead Kyle Rector, a UW doctoral student in computer science and engineering.

The program, called Eyes-Free Yoga, uses Microsoft Kinect software to track body movements and offer auditory feedback in real time for six yoga poses, including Warrior I and II, Tree and Chair poses. Rector and her collaborators published their methodology in the conference proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery's SIGACCESS International Conference on Computers and Accessibility in Bellevue, Wash., Oct. 21-23.

Rector wrote programming code that instructs the Kinect to read a user's body angles, then gives verbal feedback on how to adjust his or her arms, legs, neck or back to complete the pose. For example, the program might say: "Rotate your shoulders left," or "Lean sideways toward your left."

The result is an accessible yoga "exergame" a video game used for exercise that allows people without sight to interact verbally with a simulated yoga instructor. Rector and collaborators Julie Kientz, a UW assistant professor in Computer Science & Engineering and in Human Centered Design & Engineering, and Cynthia Bennett, a research assistant in computer science and engineering, believe this can transform a typically visual activity into something that blind people can also enjoy.

"I see this as a good way of helping people who may not know much about yoga to try something on their own and feel comfortable and confident doing it," Kientz said. "We hope this acts as a gateway to encouraging people with visual impairments to try exercise on a broader scale."

Each of the six poses has about 30 different commands for improvement based on a dozen rules deemed essential for each yoga position. Rector worked with a number of yoga instructors to put together the criteria for reaching the correct alignment in each pose. The Kinect first checks a person's core and suggests alignment changes, then moves to the head and neck area, and finally the arms and legs. It also gives positive feedback when a person is holding a pose correctly.

Rector practiced a lot of yoga as she developed this technology. She tested and tweaked each aspect by deliberately making mistakes while performing the exercises. The result is a program that she believes is robust and useful for people who are blind.

"I tested it all on myself so I felt comfortable having someone else try it," she said.

Rector worked with 16 blind and low-vision people around Washington to test the program and get feedback. Several of the participants had never done yoga before, while others had tried it a few times or took yoga classes regularly. Thirteen of the 16 people said they would recommend the program and nearly everyone would use it again.

The technology uses simple geometry and the law of cosines to calculate angles created during yoga. For example, in some poses a bent leg must be at a 90-degree angle, while the arm spread must form a 160-degree angle. The Kinect reads the angle of the pose using cameras and skeletal-tracking technology, then tells the user how to move to reach the desired angle.

Rector opted to use Kinect software because it's open source and easily accessible on the market, but she said it does have some limitations in the level of detail with which it tracks movement.

Rector and collaborators plan to make this technology available online so users could download the program, plug in their Kinect and start doing yoga. The team also is pursuing other projects that help with fitness.

###

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, a Kynamatrix Innovation through Collaboration grant and the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists Foundation.

For more information, contact Rector at rectorky@cs.washington.edu or 503-449-1736.

Posted with video and photos: http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/10/17/yoga-accessible-for-the-blind-with-new-microsoft-kinect-based-program/

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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

In a typical yoga class, students watch an instructor to learn how to properly hold a position. But for people who are blind or can't see well, it can be frustrating to participate in these types of exercises.

Now, a team of University of Washington computer scientists has created a software program that watches a user's movements and gives spoken feedback on what to change to accurately complete a yoga pose.

"My hope for this technology is for people who are blind or low-vision to be able to try it out, and help give a basic understanding of yoga in a more comfortable setting," said project lead Kyle Rector, a UW doctoral student in computer science and engineering.

The program, called Eyes-Free Yoga, uses Microsoft Kinect software to track body movements and offer auditory feedback in real time for six yoga poses, including Warrior I and II, Tree and Chair poses. Rector and her collaborators published their methodology in the conference proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery's SIGACCESS International Conference on Computers and Accessibility in Bellevue, Wash., Oct. 21-23.

Rector wrote programming code that instructs the Kinect to read a user's body angles, then gives verbal feedback on how to adjust his or her arms, legs, neck or back to complete the pose. For example, the program might say: "Rotate your shoulders left," or "Lean sideways toward your left."

The result is an accessible yoga "exergame" a video game used for exercise that allows people without sight to interact verbally with a simulated yoga instructor. Rector and collaborators Julie Kientz, a UW assistant professor in Computer Science & Engineering and in Human Centered Design & Engineering, and Cynthia Bennett, a research assistant in computer science and engineering, believe this can transform a typically visual activity into something that blind people can also enjoy.

"I see this as a good way of helping people who may not know much about yoga to try something on their own and feel comfortable and confident doing it," Kientz said. "We hope this acts as a gateway to encouraging people with visual impairments to try exercise on a broader scale."

Each of the six poses has about 30 different commands for improvement based on a dozen rules deemed essential for each yoga position. Rector worked with a number of yoga instructors to put together the criteria for reaching the correct alignment in each pose. The Kinect first checks a person's core and suggests alignment changes, then moves to the head and neck area, and finally the arms and legs. It also gives positive feedback when a person is holding a pose correctly.

Rector practiced a lot of yoga as she developed this technology. She tested and tweaked each aspect by deliberately making mistakes while performing the exercises. The result is a program that she believes is robust and useful for people who are blind.

"I tested it all on myself so I felt comfortable having someone else try it," she said.

Rector worked with 16 blind and low-vision people around Washington to test the program and get feedback. Several of the participants had never done yoga before, while others had tried it a few times or took yoga classes regularly. Thirteen of the 16 people said they would recommend the program and nearly everyone would use it again.

The technology uses simple geometry and the law of cosines to calculate angles created during yoga. For example, in some poses a bent leg must be at a 90-degree angle, while the arm spread must form a 160-degree angle. The Kinect reads the angle of the pose using cameras and skeletal-tracking technology, then tells the user how to move to reach the desired angle.

Rector opted to use Kinect software because it's open source and easily accessible on the market, but she said it does have some limitations in the level of detail with which it tracks movement.

Rector and collaborators plan to make this technology available online so users could download the program, plug in their Kinect and start doing yoga. The team also is pursuing other projects that help with fitness.

###

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, a Kynamatrix Innovation through Collaboration grant and the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists Foundation.

For more information, contact Rector at rectorky@cs.washington.edu or 503-449-1736.

Posted with video and photos: http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/10/17/yoga-accessible-for-the-blind-with-new-microsoft-kinect-based-program/

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| E-mail
| Share
]

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.